The business-led summit will take place in January 2027, building on last year’s flagship global investment summit hosted by SFE and the then Lord Mayor of London, which brought together global investors with firms in key growth sectors.

The event will be hosted in Edinburgh and will represent the “start of a plan to better coordinate and communicate the activities aimed at positioning Scotland as an attractive place to invest and start and scale a business”, SFE said in a statement.

The summit will bring together more than 100 investors and senior-level international decision-makers with high-growth Scottish businesses, creating opportunities to connect ambitious companies with the capital and networks they need to grow.

It builds on the findings of Shane Corstorphine’s Scaling Scotland report, which highlighted the challenge of turning Scotland’s strong pipeline of start-ups and scale-ups into a greater number of larger, globally successful businesses. The report identified funding, talent, business capability and access to markets as key factors in enabling more Scottish businesses to scale.

SFE chief executive Sandy Begbie CBE FRSE said: “This summit will provide a unique opportunity to put some of our most exciting and fastest-growing businesses directly in front of global investors. Bringing more than 100 investors together with ambitious Scottish businesses is about more than securing individual investment deals - it is about demonstrating the depth and quality of the opportunity that exists in Scotland.

“This flagship event will build on the momentum generated by last year’s Global Investment Summit and establish a much stronger narrative around Scotland as a place where businesses can grow to scale. It will be the ideal opportunity to demonstrate that Scotland has the talent, businesses, infrastructure and investment opportunities to compete on a global stage.”

Shane Corstorphine, former Skyscanner executive and author of the Scaling Scotland report, said: “Scotland has never had more fantastic start-ups being built here, and that is a credit to the founders and everyone who has backed them. The harder part is what comes next. Too few of those companies make the jump from promising scale-up to global business, and a big part of the reason is that great companies and the right kind of investment are not finding each other.”

He claimed: “Scotland has around 1,520 scale-ups turning over less than £5m, but only 85 above £50m. This summit puts ambitious companies directly in front of the investors who can help close that gap, and I’m delighted to support it.”

Investor and Chief Entrepreneur Ana Stewart added: “Scotland is not short of promising start-up businesses and in my role as Chief Entrepreneur, I see on a daily basis the strength of that talent.

“But entrepreneurs face real challenges when they come to scaling their business and to realise their potential - for their businesses and the wider economy - we need to do more to address some of those challenges.

“This summit is a great way to elevate the scale-up opportunities that exist in Scotland. It also represents the first of a series of more closely co-ordinated activities and events planned over the year, aimed at shaping Scotland’s reputation as a leading location to both start and scale a business.”